Huh? What? Oh….

 

As vaccines are deployed more widely, as new containment treatments are discovered and approved, at least here in the United States, COVID-19 is beginning to fade. We are becoming less cautious, more frustrated with preventative measures… just plain burning out on the whole damned COVID thang. But still, we are not really sure how many people succumbed to the disease. The November 6th The Economist explains: “On November 1st, the official global covid death toll passed 5m. But these official numbers are unreliable, not least because data from testing for the virus can be patchy. A more reliable method to count death tolls is to measure ‘excess deaths’—how many more people died during a year than one would expect in normal years. According to The Economist’s excess-death tracker, the actual number of people lost to the virus is probably closer to 17m.

“The World Health Organisation said [in the first week in November] that Europe is again the centre of the covid pandemic, and warned that the disease may kill another 500,000 Europeans by February. It blamed near-record caseloads on sketchy vaccine take-up.” Even in the US, governmental tracking agencies often have legacy computer systems that cannot communicate with each other. Different jurisdictions have tracked COVID with a clear political slant. For example, Florida fired a senior data software engineer because she tracked genuine COVID mortality statistics despite an order from the governor to report deaths as solely attributable to any other key symptom (like pneumonia). 

But we still have to ask: Is the United States closer to ending its pandemic spread than most of the developed world? Merck has even released a treatment, molnupiravir, that significantly reduces the severity of the disease if applied early enough. With 28 million 5- to 11-year-old children becoming eligible for the vaccine, even experts are hopeful that COVID will just be an endemic annoyance with decreasing impact on all of us, much like HIV which is dramatically contained but still not cured. The inoculation of children seems to be administered as much to prevent the spread of the disease as it is to protect the young.

We know that different individuals who have had COVID noted different symptoms. Some had little or no inconvenience. Others died. Well over 750,000 of us (or more if the above trend is accurate). Others survived with those long-term symptoms (“long COVID”), some that never seem to go away. It’s a crap shoot, and too many false “cures,” “preventatives,” “treatments” and stupid beliefs of deified natural power have taken down some of the most stalwart resisters. We haven’t lived with the disease long enough to understand what that virus really does to the body. But as we gather more data, some of the findings are particularly disturbing; the aftereffects of the disease in some just might be more permanent… or more intense. From a litany of micro-clots to perhaps permanent brain damage.

“The disease may be best known for its ability to rob people of their breath, but as the pandemic spread, patients began reporting a disconcerting array of cognitive and psychiatric issues — memory lapses, fatigue and a mental fuzziness that became known as brain fog. There were also more acute problems, including paranoia, hallucinations, thoughts of suicide and psychosis… This strange constellation of symptoms has led researchers to suspect that the disease is mounting a direct attack on the brain. Researchers want to figure out how — and what the assault’s long-term effects may be.” Amina Kahn, writing for the November 5th Los Angeles Times.

Science fiction movies have often dealt with invasive species focusing on eating the human brain. It’s ugly and scary. But when it gets real, those fictional feelings that fade when we leave the theater can be downright terrifying. Adults and children. And while long COVID is particularly rare in children who contract the disease, for those who contract severe infections, the horribles can even result in death. There may be an associated vulnerability – like diabetes or obesity – or it could be the luck of the draw. We used to believe the disease did not infect children, but variants changed that assumption.

For a few children, there is also the possibility of multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. Kawasaki disease has also become associated with a few children who have succumbed to COVID infections. Kawasaki disease causes swelling (inflammation) in the walls of medium-sized arteries throughout the body. It primarily affects children. The inflammation tends to affect the coronary arteries, which supply blood to the heart muscle. And yes, it can be fatal. In that small percentage of children who have longer effects, the November 6th NJ.com reports: “The most common symptoms of long COVID in children and teens include the following:

• Brain fog

• Fatigue

• Trouble breathing

• Cough

• Joint or muscle pain

• Chest or stomach pain

• Fever

• Headache

• Mood swings

• Lightheadedness upon standing

• Heart palpitations

• Loss of sense of smell or taste

 

“Experts say certain symptoms present themselves only in children when it comes to long COVID.” For most children, even with some form of long COVID, those symptoms tend to disappear in a few weeks. 

 

OK, there are risks everywhere, but what are we learning about the longer-term impact of COVID on the brain? In kids and adults? Working in her laboratory at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, Dr. Maura Boldrini is examining the brain cells of people who have died from COVID-19. What she has found is that in some, the virus may impact the brain as well as the respiratory system. “Researchers have found signs that the virus can establish a foothold of sorts on the periphery of the brain, where the protective blood-brain barrier opens up to allow key molecules to slip through. One of those places is the olfactory bulb, which can be reached through the nose — a fact that could explain why so many COVID-19 patients lose their sense of smell… Yet scientists have so far found little evidence that the virus penetrates any deeper than that. Instead, they’ve seen the type of damage caused by strokes, as well as the blood clots that may have precipitated them.

 

“That’s part of why Boldrini and many others suspect that inflammation — the immune system’s all-hands-on-deck response to an invader — may play an essential role in the brain damage experienced by COVID-19 patients… Inflammation can trigger blood clots, and once a clot forms, inflammation increases around it. It’s similar to what’s seen in people who experience traumatic brain injury, including football players, military veterans and victims of car accidents… ‘People that have this kind of trauma in the brain have presented with sudden changes in behavior and personality and suicide and other brain symptoms,’ Boldrini says. It’s eerily similar to what many COVID-19 patients face — and she doesn’t think that’s a coincidence.” Los Angeles Times, November 6th. In a world of hyper-accelerating technology research, laced with a tsunami of conspiracy of false-hope remedies, there is little patience among many for the kinds of answers only time can generate. Instant gratification is simply not an option!

 

I’m Peter Dekom, and we tend to forget that we simply have not had that much time and experience with the novel coronavirus to fully understand the disease or deal with its long-term implications, and there is no substitute for that learning curve.